~ A Network Blog by a Network Engineer

In just over two months it will be time for the Juniper customer summit known as NXTWORK 2017. This is an awesome chance to meet with other Juniper customers, Juniper employees, our awesome peers, and if you are lucky some of the amazing Juniper Ambassadors (pictured below). The event is scheduled for December 11 – 13 at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, San Francisco, Ca.

This event is similar to what other vendors offer for a conference (Cisco, VMWare, Dell/EMC) yet much more intimate. There are breakout sessions available that you can attend to learn more about technologies, services, education, and much much more. You can be assured that you will have a good seat for any of the speakers, no stadiums here where you feel disconnected – here you will be up close and personal with all the different speakers.

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I can imagine that is how I looked when I got my “new” Juniper SRX from (insert favorite auction site) and booted it the first time. All ready to play with my new toy – lab some new ideas – and boom, it has a password on it already. Grrrr….

Since I had to recover the root password, figured I would post the procedure here in case others are looking for it. Not only in case others are looking for it, the next time that I need it as well! 🙂

So the first thing we need to do here is to make sure the device is powered off and we have a console cable connected to it. I will assume you know how to use your terminal program and access the console already for this post otherwise I suspect you would not be here.

Now that you are connected we can go ahead and power the SRX on and watch it boot. In order to boot the system into single user mode, we need to press the space bar when prompted. It will be right at this point in the boot process – right when you see Hit [Enter} to boot immediately, or space bar for command prompt. Here you need to press the SPACE BAR quick to interrupt the boot process.

From here you will be presented with a loader> prompt. Go ahead and enter boot -s to boot the system in single user mode. This will allow you to boot the system and change the password.

Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or space bar for command prompt.

Type ‘?’ for a list of commands, ‘help’ for more detailed help.loader> boot -s

From here the system will continue to boot for a bit. Eventually, you will be presented with an option to enter the recovery mode by entering recovery. Take notice that this also disables the system watchdog timer (this process monitors the services and will take appropriate actions if a service has failed or stops.)

System watchdog timer disabledEnter full pathname of shell or ‘recovery’ for root password recovery or RETURN for /bin/sh: recovery

The system will now continue to boot, eventually getting coming up to a root> prompt

NOTE: Once in the CLI, you will need to enter configuration mode usingNOTE: the ‘configure’ command to make any required changes. For example,NOTE: to reset the root password, type:NOTE: configureNOTE: set system root-authentication plain-text-passwordNOTE: (enter the new password when asked)NOTE: commitNOTE: exitNOTE: exitNOTE: When you exit the CLI, you will be asked if you want to rebootNOTE: the system

Starting CLI … root>

One here you may now enter edit mode and set a new root password. Once you have set the password, go ahead and commit it and then reboot. At that time your new root password will allow you to access the device.

root> editEntering configuration mode

[edit]root# set system root-authentication plain-text-passwordNew password: juniper123Retype new password: juniper123

[edit]root# commit and-quitcommit completeExiting configuration mode

root> request system reboot in 0Reboot the system in 0? [yes,no] (no) yes

Shutdown NOW![pid 1651]

When the router reboots, you will need to press the space-bar to get into the loader> prompt to re-enable the watchdog service using the command watchdog enable and then you can boot the SRX by issuing boot.

Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or space bar for command prompt.

Type ‘?’ for a list of commands, ‘help’ for more detailed help.loader> watchdog enableloader> boot

Once it has finished booting, you should be able to log in as root with your new password.

Amnesiac (ttyu0)

login: root Password:

— JUNOS 12.3X48-D45.6 built 2017-02-19 01:11:50 UTCroot@%

That is all there is to it. Not as simple as confreg 0x2142 in Cisco, but still not too bad.

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A few days ago I received an email from Juniper that Junos Genius had been relaunched. If you have never used the old version, no worries as I rarely used it as well. With the new version, you have to setup a new account anyway. This re-launch however, looks a bit more interesting as it is more geared towards online classes and training and education. In fact, you can actually purchase real courseware (very limited at launch) on this site and attend a “virtual presentation” of the material.

There are two variants of Junos Genius available. One is free and comes with limited content, the other is subscription based and has some additional content. You can access the new Junos Genius at www.junosgenius.net. Besides just the web interface, you can also get an iOS (iPad and iPhone) and Android app to help you learn wherever or whenever you want.

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The Free version grants you access to some practice tests (JNCIA-Junos, JNCIS-ENT, and JNCIS-SP), over 80 learning bytes (short and concise video tips), and hardware overview and deployment courses. While the content is still limited, it is a nice start and looks to have a promising future.

FREE-VRF

FREE-RIB

FREE-QFX5100

FREE-NORTHSTAR

FREE-JNCISENT

FREE-JNCIA

FREE-INSTANCE

FREE-EX2300

FREE-ANYCAST

FREE-6VPE

I took a brief look at the free practice tests and was pleasantly surprised. There were 65 questions in total that reflected what one will find on the actual test. They were presented in a similar way to the actual test and do test your knowledge (I got a bunch of Binary questions, yech!). If you are planning to take any one of those tests soon, the free version can help you gauge yourself on the material that is tested.

I also took a look at one of the free Learning Bytes, Route Sharing on Junos Devices Using RIB Groups. It can be a complicated to understand at first and is one that many have a problem with. I was impressed to see it as one of the free Learning Bytes. I won’t go into detail as to what it is, I will save that for to watch and learn on Junos Genius (or perhaps a future blog post). It was nice to see it there – it can be a tough one for people to grasp.

The subscription model is available in 6-month and 12-month options currently priced at $200 and $250 respectively. The subscription provides you with an additional 80+ Learning Bytes (160+ in total) and additional JNCP practice tests (JNCIS-SEC, JNCIS-SDNA, JNCIP-ENT, JNCIP-SP, JNCIP-SEC, and JNCIP-DC).

There are plenty of free preview videos for the paid courses, so you don’t have to go blindly to see what is available. They play the first few minutes of the video for you to see what they cover. From looking around, it is easily worth the $250/yr for the content if you want to learn new Juniper skills.

SUP-JNCIPDC

SUB-REGEX

SUB-JSNAP

SUB-JNCIPENT

SUB-BRANCHSRX

SUB-AUTOVLAN

Also, if you are planning to take any one of the mentioned JNCIS ($300/test) or JNCIP ($400/test) tests, spending the $200 or $250 for this subscription is not a bad option to help ensure you are ready. While they won’t guarantee a pass, the tests should help you gauge your level of competence and readiness for the test.

Lastly, there are some actual courses that you can purchase on Junos Genius. These are separate from the Plus subscription, these are actual classroom type courses. Currently, they offer:

All these courses are the full courseware you would get if you attended in-person training and you also do get access to the labs remotely for the course. The prices for these courses is $5 more than attending an instructor-led course of the same title. One other important item to be aware of is that you only get access to the courseware for 30 days and 20 hours of lab access. You do not get any physical books, everything is delivered via the Junos Genius portal.

In my opinion that is very odd – the price is actually $5 more for the recorded content for some reason. The 30-day limitation on course access and 20 hours of lab access seems a bit light to me as well. I hope they consider extending the access to at least 120 days and increase the lab time to 40 hours. I also do not know how they course books are delivered; are they secured PDF; are you able to also order them if you want? I do not know the answers and if I find out I will be sure to update the post.

Overall though, if you want to learn Juniper or increase your Juniper skills, I would be sure to go and sign up for Junos Genius and kick the tires. I would focus on the free courses if you are starting out, and subscription if you are going for JNCIP level certifications and knowledge.

Update Sept 2017 – Juniper reached out to me on the price difference. The list price of Juniper classes is $2400. There is a training partner that discounts their classes by $5 and that is why we see the price difference.